APRIL FOOLISHNESS ONLY WORKS FOR THE ENGLISH
Tessa Dowling

The Sunday Independent
April 2 2006

If you sit long enough kwaMzoli, someone is sure to spoil your fun. Bra X was just about to give Sis' Lulu a foot massage and Bra Z had generously ordered another round of drinks.

Then there he came - that know-it-all with the bad attitude and breath, the one we all nicknamed "Mandilazilonke" (Let-Me-Know-Everything).

Mandilazilonke rested his hands on our table, which shook a little under his considerable weight, and asked, "Can anyone of you ballpoints (slang for 'supposedly educated people') translate the phrase 'April Fool's Day?' Perhaps that little undlebe-zikhanya-ilanga knows." (He was referring to me, the whitey, "the-one-whose-ears-the-sun-shines-through".)

He sat down heavily, squashed his face into his neck and let his bloodshot eyes protrude pompously. I heard Sis' Dikeledi whisper crossly, "O setlatla!" (Sotho: Fool!) and regal Mamthembu click, "Sibhanxa!" (Xhosa: Fool!) and the gorgeous Zulu twins, Zanele and Zodwa, simultaneously spit out, "Siphukuphuku!" (Zulu: Fool!) And they weren't referring to that silly day in April.

"Owukeyi," says Bra X. "How about "Imini yezidenge?"

"Kleva!" praises Sis' Lulu, and she gives Bra Z the kind of look that means, "My bra, you win this battle and you get to see a little more of my bra."

"Cha, hayi!" Know-It-All shakes his head. "You can't just choose one of Xhosa's 25 words for fool, without even giving any thought to its true sementic implications."

Mamthembu corrects him. "You mean semantic, bhuti. But I think the problem lies not with the word 'fool' but the word 'April'."

"April!" shouts Dikeledi, looking like she's about to burst into tears (and "tears" is exactly what Dikeledi means). "You don't want to know about translating the months into African languages. It's a big hornet's nest. I wouldn't go there. Not unless o semaumau!" (Sotho: you are a fool.)

She explains to us that where she used to work, the boss wanted a calendar made with all the months in African languages. She was all for using the borrowed words, Eprili, Meyi, Juni, etc, but then a silly tseketseke (another Sotho word for 'fool') colleague decided no, they must be translated into the traditional names for months. Really, you would think they weren't a busy office, because this isihandiba (pig-headed fool) was seemingly in love with the old-fashioned, long, romantic names for months that African languages are blessed with. Like Motshehanong for "May" in Sotho and Tshazimpunzi for "April" in Xhosa. (Because, you see, that's meant to be the month when it gets so hot that the ground heats up and makes the small springbuck leap about - but is April that hot, anyway?)

Dikeledi just wanted to make the calendar and get on with her job. "I didn't study actuarial science for all those years just to land up translating 'February' into Zulu!"

"Whose calling my name in vain?" demands Bra February, a kwaai looking brother taking a brief sabbatical from Pollsmoor. "I'm not into no Zulu! It's the Tswana chicks that makes me clicks!" He whistled through the space where his upper incisors had once been.

Dikeledi flashes him one of her rare smiles and continues to relate her monthly saga. Apparently, this office idiot (English synonym for fool) was into tradition in a big way, being particularly partial to home-brewed beer and nubile maidens. So guess what he did? He took an extended field trip (synonym for "funeral") into the rural areas to source the words from slightly foolish (sephoqo) old crones: they are the only people who still know them. He had a lovely time and came back in November (or, as a Sotho traditionalist would put it, Pudungwana, which means "the young wildebeest"), bringing with him the "correct" names for the 12 months Ð and a new wife and two children. And then, can you believe it? - just when it looked as if the calendar (on which work had started in 2000) would be ready for January 2006, the Pedis went and changed their months.

Now Dikeledi actually did burst into tears at the memory. "No word of a lie! They thought April would sound better if it were October and so on. It was a complete and utter disaster!"

Bra Z clicked and muttered something disparaging about the fickleness of Pedi linguists.

But Mandilazilonke was triumphant. "You see, niyabona ke, here you all are, with your digris and your whatnots, and you can't even agree how to translate a simple phrase. Fools!"

Bra X however wouldn't accept defeat. "But hold on, my bru, you've totally missed the point about April Fool." (There was absolutely no ways he was going to land up looking like an isitwabatwaba. [meaning - guess!])

"You see, April Fool is a helluva English thing, my bru. It's a pitch white thing, really. So the name must stay English. On April Fool's day, amaNgesi (the English) do stupid things like trying to fool people with mock newspaper stories. 'Table Mountain moved to Gauteng' is really April-Fool foolish, you can't translate that kind of madness into another language. And anyway, the real news is so foolish these days, what's the point?"

S'true," chipped in Bra February, "April Fool - it's a simpel (Afrikaans: foolish) English idea, no matter what month you're in."

Tessa Dowling is a director of African Voices. Thandi Mpambo-Sibukwana, head of the Xhosa department at Wynberg Girls' High school and no fool herself, helped with some of the more obscure vocabulary.